


To Love What Is Mortal

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester's Birthday, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Established Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:34:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You’re beautiful,” Cas says, right to Dean’s face. “Nothing could stop me from wanting you.”





	To Love What Is Mortal

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little belated, but I couldn't let the 24th go by without posting a bday fic for my favorite Winchester 💚 Title from Mary Oliver's "[In Blackwater Woods](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_inblackwaterwoods.html)."

“So’re you ever gonna tell me where we’re headed, or am I just supposed to drive around Lebanon until we run out of gas?”

It’s pissing rain, and the Impala’s wipers are running at full speed, cutting smudged arcs in the wet windshield. It’s not what anyone would call a riveting view, but Cas takes his time tearing his eyes away from it to look Dean in the face.  

“Oh.” Cas’s sounds detached, like he nodded off or something, which would _maybe_ be convincing if he actually physically _could_ nod off. “No. I have a destination in mind.” He rattles off an address, and Dean shoots him a disbelieving side eye.

“Isn’t that a diner in town?”

“Yes.”

“You want to go out to eat at a diner,” Dean says with all the incredulity of someone who knows for a goddamned _fact_ that Cas doesn’t need to eat any more than he needs to sleep. “ _You_ do.”

“Not particularly.” Cas shifts in his seat, and that’s another thing that he doesn’t do: squirm. “But I understand that it’s customary to take one’s significant other out to dinner to mark special occasions.”

Dean. Does not like where this is headed. “Cas—”

“The diner serves ten varieties of pie,” Cas cuts in with a touch of desperation. “And they offer five different flavors of milkshakes.”

Dean perks up at the word ‘pie,’ a conditioned Pavlovian response. But, no. He will not be moved. “Cas, seriously—”

“The milkshakes are alcoholic.”

Dean presses his foot down harder on the gas, but otherwise sticks to his guns. “Cas, I’m not a little kid. You don’t need to take me out for dessert on my birthday, Jesus.”

“I don’t think of you as a child.” Good to hear, considering that Cas spent the better part of this morning rearranging Dean’s guts. “But you are very young.”  

Dean snorts so hard he nearly sprains something. “Dude, I’m forty.” The number sits awkwardly in Dean’s mouth, stale as morning breath on his tongue. It’s just. Forty. What the fuck?

“And I’m ‘older than dirt,’ as you’ve put it. You’ll always be young compared to me.”

Dean hits his turn signal and swings around a corner. Mouth unfurling into a smirk, he says, “So you’re saying I’m the twink in this relationship. I can live with that.”

Cas sighs a lifetime’s worth of sighs, but otherwise refrains from commenting.

Dean doesn’t want to talk birthdays or all their heavy implications, but the silence’s making him itch, and damn if he’s not gonna fill it. “Y’know, I never really got birthdays. It’s not like the people getting celebrated did any of the work. They just kind of, you know. Popped out.”

“I’ve often wondered at that, myself. But I think the intent is to express gratitude for their presence in your life.”

“Corny, but plausible.” Dean sees the diner looming on their right and turns into the narrow parking lot. He pulls into a space sitting flush with the sidewalk and kills the engine, but he doesn’t go to unlock his door. Neither does Cas.

Dean angles his body towards Cas, one hand pressed flat to the seat and one hand worrying the steering wheel, trying to think of how to put this. Trying to decide if he even wants to talk about this at all.

But Cas’s got him thinking about gratitude, is the thing.

Cas is already mirroring Dean, and when Dean meets his eyes, he tilts his head in mute question.

Dean wets his lips, but his tongue’s dry enough that it doesn’t make much of a difference. “You know, as of today, I’ve been alive on Earth for as many years as I was in—for as many years as I spent down there. Guess that technically puts me in my eighties, huh.”

“Technically,” Cas allows, but his fists are clenched against his thighs, a human gesture that projects tension. “Dean, you don’t have to—”

“No, I wanna talk about this.” Except, no, he doesn’t. In fact, he half thinks he’d rather strap himself back onto the rack than talk about this at all, ever, but if there’s anyone he _can_ talk about it to, it’s Cas. “It’s just. I know forty years seems like nothing to you, but the thing is. The thing is, I could’ve spent _another_ forty years down there if it weren’t for you. More. And I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for pulling me outta there, not really, so. Thanks.”

It’s not enough. It will never be enough.   

“I was under orders.” Cas says it like he thinks Dean’s somehow forgotten. Like he could ever forget. “You know that. You shouldn’t thank me for doing as I was told.”  

Dean lets go of the steering wheel and scrubs at his face, palm rasping against day’s old stubble. “Yeah, I guess. I guess you’re right. Still, I’m. I’m glad it was you who pulled me out.”   

“Because angels are dicks.”

Dean’s startled into laughter. “Most of them are, yeah.”

“I’m glad it was me, too,” Cas says, and for such a grouchy little fucker, he’s real goddamned proficient at breaking out the Bambi eyes. Must’ve picked that up from Sam.

Dean can hardly stand being looked at like that. His throat closes up like a steel trap, and a hot pressure pushes against the backs of his eyeballs. He ducks his head. Blinks. Scrambles for a way to salvage a mess of his own making and comes up with, “Hey, you wanna violate some public decency laws?”

Because he’s used to Dean, Cas takes the proposition in stride. “Usually I’m disinclined to turn down your advances, but I wouldn’t want us to get arrested.”

Dean braces his hand harder against the seat and pushes himself into Cas’s personal space, crowding him against the passenger side door. “You could always break us out.” Dean shapes the words against Cas’s softening mouth. “Mojo us right outta that holding cell.”

“That would cause mass panic,” Cas tells him, but he’s got one big warm hand wrapped around the nape of Dean’s neck and the other clamped down on his thigh, thumb tracing his inseam. The curve of his lower lip is lush and waiting to bruise between Dean’s teeth, begging Dean to take a bite. Dean _does_ take a bite, but he’s careful to lick away the sting right after, working Cas’s mouth open into a filthy-hot kiss that Dean can feel in his fucking _dick_.

On that note, Dean was only half joking about the car sex. Cas’s got a poker face to end all poker faces, and passersby probably wouldn’t even realize that he was getting the skin hoovered off his dick if Dean were to stay out of sight.

That plan lasts about as long as it takes Dean to formulate it, though, because when he shoves Cas harder against the door and tries to worm a hand down between them, his spine fucking _pops_.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Dean groans into the kiss, but not in the sexy way. Cas startles and pulls off Dean’s mouth, the back of his skull thunking against the window.

“Dean?”

“M’fine,” Dean says, disengaging to knuckle the small of his back. “Christ, I think I’m getting too old for car sex. Man, aging’s the _worst_.” Rolling his shoulders, he slants Cas a smile. “You still gonna want me when I’m old and wrinkly?”

Dean’s mostly joking, but he can’t help but worry about it. Not the aging part, not really, although he’s not looking forward to that, either. Mostly he worries about what Cas is gonna do when Dean’s gone. Something’s gonna get Dean, be it bloody death or mundane old age, and then something’s gonna come for Sam and Jack and Claire and Mom, and Cas. Cas’ll be alone.

Forty years. Forty years in Hell, forty years on Earth, another forty after that if Dean’s extremely fucking lucky. How can Cas stand it? How can an angel stand to love a human when it’s as good as a human loving a _gnat_?

“Cas,” Dean starts to say, but Cas beats him to the punch.

“You’re beautiful,” Cas says, right to Dean’s fucking face. “Nothing could stop me from wanting you.”

Jesus Christ, there he goes again. Cheeks stinging, Dean sinks low in his seat, knees knocking the dash. Cas comes after him, though, leaning down to press a kiss to his overwarm cheek.

“Would you like to go inside now?”

Dean grumbles something like an affirmative, then straightens up.

“Hey,” he says, nudging his elbow against Cas’s solid flank. “You gonna give me birthday spankings later?”

“Eat your pie first,” says Cas. It’s not a _no_.

Dean goes in for another kiss, and the rain patters against the windows.


End file.
